The project proposes to investigate the relationship between extended family structure and fertility in the Bourbonnais region of central France during the nineteenth century. The aim is to compare the marital fertility, marriage rates, and population growth in two areas, one with stem families and the other with joint families. It will be carried out at the village level through the reconstitution of families and the use of record linkage techniques to combine information on the demographic and the household histories of individuals. This will be compared with aggregate measures of family structure and demographic rates calculated for a random sample of villages from the two regions. The necessary data will be taken from census records and parish registers already obtained from French archives. The objective is to explain how the two kinds of extended family structure can be related directly to the contrasting demographic patterns in the two regions.